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28DL Full Member

On the 18th of September 2015 SSI (Thai based Sahaviriya Steel Industries) announced that due to the decline in steel prices that the Lackenby Steelworks would be paused. By September the 28th 2015, they announced the plant would be "Mothballed" due again to the poor steel trading conditions across the World, which again resulted in very low steel prices. On the 2nd of October 2015 SSI entered liquidation! On the 12th of October 2015 the Receivers announced there was no realistic prospect of finding a buyer & the Coke Ovens at Redcar would be extinguished.

After being sold off by Tata Steel, the Lackenby BOS (Basic Oxygen Steel)& Concast Plant ran in conjunction with the Blast furnace at Redcar. The Blast Furnace was capable of producing 10,000 tonnes of Iron daily. which were transported by rail in specially designed rail ladles (called Torpedoes) each of these weighed in at 350 tonnes empty & 700 tonnes laden with molten Iron. Two ladles were moved at one time, hauled by purpose built 70 tonne GEC Loco"s on heavily constructed internal rail system to handle the weight.
The Loco"s moved the molten Iron the 4 miles from the Furnace at Redcar & into the BOS Plant for processing. Oxygen would be blasted into the molten Iron to reduce the carbon content down to what was required for the particular use of the end product & additional substances added at this time. From here it entered the Concast Plant where t was poured into formers and rapidly cooled, once solidified it was rolled into billets before continuing into the Steel rolling mill for final processing.

Visited with Stranton on a very rough weekend weather wise. Recce at night in a snowstorm with severe wind chill & visits from the Harbour Police & Secca, only to be topped the next day with more snow, more severe wind chill & more visits from Secca lol. I said there was workers inside going off the noise emitted by my buddy decided it was wind :) After accessing the works we found out it was indeed workers which elevated my already high pulse after running about to severe levels!

I was expecting to get bust so quickly i ended up just using my mobile for the first half hour as we dodged & dived from the workers just metres from us in a highly floodlit works, whilst casting huge shadows as we tried to be stealthy as much as we could :) We got separated & i without phone contact ? i made my way around finally getting the camera out dodging the workers as they moved about the works & the Secca doing his drive-throughs. My highlight was being on a gantry looking down on Stranton running about from pillar to post making himself more obvious lol

We finally made contact & immediately separated again? i headed away from the workers into the next complex only to find more workers FFS eventually i made it into a quiet zone of the main shed and finally relaxed. As i was stood taking long Exp pics on the 375tonne cranes trackbed i looked down below me to see a worker in high vis on his phone but hadn"t appeared to have seen me so i crept away as best i could into the shed next door which had more workers in it. At this time i got a call off Stranton about bailing as he"d just had the Secca & workers and obviously we had outstayed our welcome. Unfortunately we were at different parts of the site so it took what seemed ages before we found each other and we could do the "Headless chicken" run away dance lol As we climbed the final palisade Secca drove past us FFS

Good time on reflection, even though lack of pics & the stress & strain involved too my heart :)

Obviously our hearts go out to all the workers & their families with the continued demise of British Industry. Even the foreign owners of these plants can"t make it pay in the current economic climate

Due too the high output of the Tungsten lighting i"ve decided to add a few B&W (which i don"t normally use) as if i reduce the yellow the pics are basically neutral and look "Naff" all single RAW pics BTW :)

I wasn"t going to post it up TBH but now it"s a Tourist Hotspot & i"m a Tourist ...hope you enjoy, especially my fan club who never comment but always look

South bank Coke Works, on the left with the Steelworks on the right in the distance.

Mr Reality Hacker

Lmfao would have been one hell of a ride. Not sure if I could have spent another night in a car with @stranton though with the noises he makes after the night at royds lmfao. Think braving that is better than a snow storm if I'm honest lol. Sorry stranton you know we still buddies lol